College Basketball Bets
After a wild and crazy week of college basketball with all sorts of tournaments, travel, and neutral-site games, we have a pretty tame Monday on the hardwood. There are only 12 games today and only one of them, South Carolina State vs. Chicago State, tips off before 6:30 p.m. ET.
We get back to normal with 51 games tomorrow. The schedule will be pretty normal this week, but next week is often exam week at schools and you can get some very sporadic schedules at that time of the year, so just something to keep in mind as we move forward.
For more college basketball best bets today, check out Greg Peterson’s daily article.
As always, I want to give a shout-out to Bart Torvik (BartTorvik.com), Erik Haslam (Haslametrics.com), and KenPom, as they provide a lot of great data. This season, we’ve also connected with CBBAnalytics.com to access their data and I’ll be working that into my article. Use promo code VSIN for $30 off at CBB Analytics and find your betting edge.
This article will run Monday-Saturday. Lines will be from DraftKings, as they are widely available to readers. Shop around for the best prices.
Check the latest college basketball odds for legal U.S. sportsbooks across the country and our Vegas odds if you share a state with us here at VSiN. Also, give the college basketball betting splits (DraftKings) and Circa CBB Betting Splits a look for these or any other college basketball games today have your interest.
Odds from DraftKings Sportsbook at time of publish.
Saint Francis Red Flash at Xavier Musketeers (-27.5, 151.5)
7 p.m. ET
We’ve got serious blowout potential here between Saint Francis and Xavier. The Musketeers do have the Crosstown Shootout on Thursday against Cincinnati, so there might be a touch of a lookahead factor to this game, but I think Xavier has some things that they want to fix before then and this game is the perfect opportunity to do that.
Let’s start with the fact that Xavier is torching the net from deep, shooting 39.5% from 3. But, in a wild state of affairs, they are shooting just 42% on 2s, which ranks 352nd in the nation. They have a 14.9% Block% against, which ranks 357th in the country. Saint Francis doesn’t have much length at all, so this should be a positive regression spot for the Musketeers, who are only shooting 54.4% on Close Twos and under 27% from the mid-range. Given their 3-point shooting prowess, obviously this team has some shooters, so those mid-range numbers should improve.
Saint Francis has a Rim & 3 Rate on defense of over 92%, so teams are getting whatever shots they want against the Red Flash, who are dropping out of Division I after this season, so they spent virtually no money on the program and Rob Krimmel, who led the team to the NCAA Tournament last season, resigned when he found out that the team was moving to D-III.
The Red Flash are awful on both ends of the floor, but they are still playing at a top-40 adjusted tempo per Torvik. Xavier will have no problem running the floor in this one. Saint Francis also has a 22.3% TO% on offense, while Xavier has a 13.9% TO%. The Red Flash are very aggressive on defense, with a TO% over 20%, but Xavier should be able to play the transition game to their advantage.
Also, Xavier has allowed a 69.6% FG% on Close Twos this season, as they have not defended the interior well, but that shouldn’t be a concern here.
Pick: Xavier -27.5 (-108)
